Living Life Twice

Teaching writing frequently involves a balancing act between teaching the conventions of grammar and spelling and addressing aspects of craft and meaning. Unfortunately for young writers, many teachers devote disproportionate attention to perfecting the secretarial aspects of writing, much to the detriment of capturing ideas, attention to important details, a sense of audience, risk taking and voice - things that matter when writing.  When spelling correctly is an over-arching consideration, young writers avoid ambitious vocabulary choices. They write –safely. They write less, and they write tentatively for fear of getting it wrong. The writer, perceived as a 'good' speller, may in fact be a 'safe' speller, such is their fear of getting it wrong.  Grainger et al. (2005) claimed teachers frequently send children off to write with the songs of how to fulfil technical aspects of writing ringing in their ears and anything else is sadly swept aside. Any tune the text may p...

When we read like writers we set about gathering information about writing that will form curriculum for our teaching. As teachers of writing, we must ask ourselves: What do I see the writer doing here? Why does the writer do this? Have I seen this particular craft move in other writing What can I call this craft move? How could I try this in my own writing? How could I help my student writers to try this in their writing? The more we practice reading like writers, the easier it becomes to identify elements of writing craft present in the books with which we work. It is a skill that develops with practice. It takes time and regular practice. It requires us to engage in professional conversations with our colleagues regarding a text's potential.That is why such matters should be part of teacher planning sessions. Such texts should be our ticket in. Bring a trusted author with you... In time it has the potential to change the way we read. When we learn to read like writ...

Saw this article on line and throught it was worth sharing. It challenges some misconcpetions about the volume of reading and writing students in which students are actually engaged. The challenge seems to be how we do maximize this literary interaction? 'Today's teens have grown up zooming among hyperlinks in cyberspace and conversing in an online world of Twitter and text messaging where acronyms, assorted shortcuts and creative punctuation have redefined everyday discourse. Experts figure that kids today read and write even more than previous generations. And they do so in a broader and more complex environment — though not always in academic ways. The fire hose of online content, plus evolving media platforms, present new challenges for students — and teachers rushing to keep up with technology — as 21st-century literacies blend with traditional skills. "I'm not going to say it's a good thing or a bad thing," says Elizabeth Kleinfeld, assistant profes...

Students using dialogue in their writing is frequently defined by extremes –too much or too little! Where there is too much dialogue, the writing is more like a script. The writing often lacks any structure in which the dialogue can be supported. We have all seen students doing this with dialogue. They may have whole pages with characters talking except there is something missing. It’s the internal voice –the voice inside the character’s head along with the actions and movements that people make as they talk. Then there’s the other situation where the dialogue is either non existent or so stilted that it is almost banal. For dialogue to be of value it must reveal something about the characters and their relationship with one another. If the dialogue reveals little about the characters we begin to lose interest in them. A character’s dialogue needs to be pithier than merely talking about the weather. It should aim to push the plot along or reveal something about the plot the reader ...